Citizenship for AIDS advocate caps a journey toward 'life'

Thursday

Jul 3, 2014 at 5:00 AM

Photo by Steven King

Linford Cunningham smiles a lot. The month of June gave him reason to smile even more. It was, to say the least, an exciting 30 days for the 36-year-old Jamaican immigrant. June 2 marked his sixth year working and advocating for AIDS Project Worcester (APW). June 15 was the seventh anniversary of his return to the country, after having been here several years earlier and returning to Jamaica. June was also Pride month, a time for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community to celebrate their sexuality. As a homosexual man, Cunningham is both confident in and proud of who he is. The previous month also just happens to be when Cunningham became a US citizen.

Cunningham was one of more than 620 people to be sworn in as a citizen during a June 11 ceremony at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. His road to citizenship, not unlike many others who choose to be recognized as Americans, was not an easy one. For Cunningham, it was especially trying, a matter of life and death. Despite one of the most gravest of challenges to his health, Cunningham has chosen life.

Having first come to America 13 years ago in 2001, he would return to Jamaica in 2004. His life would change forever when he learned he was HIV positive.

"I suspected I was HIV positive in 1998, 1999," says Cunningham, who works as a housing case manager at APW. "The guy I dated in Jamaica was HIV positive, and I learned that when he died."

Despite his suspicions, Cunningham did not get tested until 2004. He admits to being sexually active before then, but says he practiced safe sex. His reluctance to get tested, he says, stemmed from fear - fear of not being able to afford the medication needed to stave off AIDS and fear of rejection in a country where tolerance of gays was in scarce supply.

"Back in Jamaica," says Cunningham, who ironically had been involved in HIV work since 1991, "there were not much services available to individuals living with HIV. I did not want to be stressing out over my HIV status. I needed to ensure I got a proper education and a proper job, which would enable me to purchase the medications. From experience, I knew people, once they found out, they stressed over it, and as a result they may die much faster."

Cunningham became infected, he says, through a relationship with an older man.

"Other gay men in the community told me about it and I asked him about it, and he got upset," Cunningham says. "He was an older person. It was that control thing and lack of empowerment on my part. We ended up having unprotected sex, and that went on for months and months and months. We broke up and one day a friend of his called me and asked me if I knew that man had died. They were at the hospital in Ward 9, and at that time Ward 9 at the hospital is where you went when you had AIDS."

Frightened and aware he may well have the disease, Cunningham decided against being tested. He came to the US in 2001, studying at a school in Minnesota. While there, he suffered frequent sinus infections. It could have been the weather, but looking back Cunningham knows it may have been the result of a compromised immune system. When he went back to Jamaica three years later, he noticed blood pooling in one of his eyes. Going to the doctor, he was told by a lab technician it was something that typically occurred with a weakened immune system.

"Coupled with that," says Cunningham, "I knew of friends who were dying [of AIDS] and I said it is time for me to get tested."

At the time, he was working for Jamaica AIDS Support for Life as a counseling and testing officer. His boss was the main counseling and testing officer. As such, she would receive any HIV testing results within the organization. Cunningham says she held onto to his for a while before telling him.

"I guess she was having a difficult time," he says, "not because she didn't want me to know, but she wasn't sure how I was going to respond. When she told me it was not really very shocking to me, because I had suspected it."

Armed with the certainty of a diagnosis, Cunningham became more active and involved in working with HIV victims. That meant speaking up more on behalf of those who suffered discrimination - and worse.

"I became much more empowered and started doing more advocacy work," he says. "Being in Jamaica and actively involved with the gay community, I was exposed to facing discrimination against me being a gay man, as well as working with other gay individuals exposed to discrimination - people being kidnapped, being beaten, being killed."

Cunningham suffered discrimination and threats to his own life, including an instance shortly after he had returned from America. Cunningham was playing music in his apartment, when one of his neighbors turned off the main circuit breaker. When Cunningham turned it back on, the man turned it back off.

"I was mad, I was upset and I am very effeminate, and he said to me why don't I go back to being my battyman self? It is a derogatory term to describe a gay man in Jamaica," Cunningham says. "I went to the police station because he was threatening me. He had a switchblade. While I was waiting to make a report, one officer came up and when I told him what transpired, his response to me was if I'm a fish I should not waste his time."

Fish, he explains, is another derogatory term for a gay man in Jamaica. Cunningham went to his office and returned to the police station with his boss.

"I was told to file a report with the sergeant," Cunningham says. "I remember when I finished filing the report the sergeant, he wrote the report and gave it to me and said, 'Hold onto this because if I keep it here it's going to go missing.'"

He was ultimately driven to leave Jamaica when he started receiving threatening phone calls related to his sexuality by someone he knew. When he turned to the courts, he was given a restraining order and told he could serve it himself.

"I said uh-uh, this is nuts," Cunningham says. "I decided I had had enough. Leaving Jamaica was not easy, but I felt I would not have been of any use to anyone if I was dead. I would be of much better use alive and in a safe space."

He moved to Worcester and worked in Rutland, before joining APW. In 2008, he was awarded asylum, offering him protection from having to return to Jamaica. Cunningham says he is currently healthy, with a CD4 (white blood cell) count of almost 700 and a viral load he says is almost undetectable.

Now a citizen, the smile he usually wears is even broader. His colleague, Martha Akstin, director of community relations for APW, says it is genuine.

"[Cunningham's] very comfortable in who he is," Akstin says. "That smile and that look is what I see 98 percent of the time. It's that 2 percent that you don't see it when there's probably something going on. He has wonderful ideas for the agency and how we can grow and service more populations."

Above: Linford Cunningham receives US citizenship. Submitted photo

He is seen by a doctor every six months and continues his advocacy work. Cunningham admits to harboring feelings for his native country.

"As much as I'm enjoying being a citizen here in America," he says, "I would have loved to have been able to stay back home and contribute toward the economical growth and development of the country, but the manner in which I would have had to stay there would not have spelled life."

Reach Walter Bird Jr. at 508-749-3166, ext. 322 or by email at wbird@worcestermagazine.com. Follow him on Twitter @walterbirdjr and find him on Facebook. Don't miss Walter on the Paul Westcott Show on WTAG radio 580AM/94.9FM every Thursday at 8:40 a.m. And be sure to visit www.worcestermagazine.com every day for what's new in Worcester.